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Friday, November 04, 2011

Do you consider your intuition while taking decisions?

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Albert Einstein on Intuition

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I had one manager in past who was very critical on the data and use to take time to take decisions. He would ask so many questions on the data. He was fully relied on the data. But it would take so much time and the issues would be solved by another person or would hang till somebody else would enter into the same. He was neither an effective decision maker nor an effective leader.

In another case, the manager was taking fast decisions. He also would use the data but was more relied on actual fact and related gut feelings. In some cases you have huge data mined by your team for you and have a little time. How you would take a decision in such situation?

If you follow the rational and theoretical process of decision, then you would not be able to take half of the decision in day to day life due to time constraints.

Imagine, you are walking on the road and suddenly stray dog comes in front you. You become consciously alert of the danger. Your mind acts accordingly and you try to avoid the stray dog by distancing yourself from the dog. What you do here? Your mind process the data and you take a decision. In decision making process, you find out the danger and then you take a decision depending on your intuition. When there is no data, or data is huge and you have a little time or just your data is not working, your intuition helps you. You need to develop your intuition. Great decisions by great industry leaders are taken. Take an example of Dhirubhai Ambani. The foundation of the Jamnagar refinery was decided by Dhirubhai and not by engineers. (Engineers had assured that time that Jamnagar was not the seismic region (based on the data).You know the results, during earthquake, it remain safe.

Successful professionals do not make a great many decisions. They concentrate on what is important. They try to make the few important decisions on the highest level of conceptual understanding. For this they need to be able to withdraw from within themselves intuitive, subjective information to help them in their decisions.

Intuition is the ability to tap your feelings to make better decisions. Throughout our formal education we receive instructions on how to follow guidelines. We learn methodologies and acquire information. This creates the basis for deductive reasoning.

The ultimate expression of deductive reasoning is intuition. Through reason we can make a decision based on numbers, however, logical reasoning is not enough in today’s complex world.

Intuition is what distinguishes the mature professional from just the manager. To do this effectively, professionals have to understand the substance of themselves and their rolls and that of the people under them. They must understand the essence of this work and visualize the future. Intuition is what enables them to do this.

But, how do we find intuition? One way to look for it is to follow our common sense, what feels right to us. Intuition occurs spontaneously. When executives are controlled by their egos or their intellect, they don’t let their minds free to use their intuition. Using your intuition is like having a sixth sense. It is like lighting up the mind to enable executives to make the best decisions.